


interrogatives

by pendules



Category: Football RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-04
Updated: 2011-05-04
Packaged: 2017-10-19 00:27:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/194881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pendules/pseuds/pendules
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four vacations Xabi spends in Spain. Letters, phone calls and conversations. Xabi thinks about home. Steven (thinks <i>too</i> much) reminisces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	interrogatives

**Author's Note:**

> I am thinking it's a sign,   
> that the freckles in our eyes are mirror images,  
> and when we kiss, they're perfectly aligned.   
> And I would like to speculate that God himself did make  
> us into corresponding shapes, like puzzle pieces from the clay.
> 
> — _Such Great Heights_ \- The Postal Service

Steven sits and waits, sits and writes. Sips his coffee (wonders how three years made him a coffee man) as the sun is rising and paces and mutters under his breath ( _stupid Xabi, running off again..._ ) and stretches and writes—

 

 _But. But the story starts long before here and now and what we feel. And not a decade ago when we played football by ourselves and looked up at the same inky, black sky, thousands of miles apart, together only in aspiration._

 _But before. (Before they all knew our names, and before there was football and before there was love. There was a plan and now. Now, we have fulfilled it.)_

 

It may sound stupid, and it probably is, but as much as he's always said that he didn't need anything to believe in, it has always presented itself. A sport, a team, a night, a man. (He's always founded it easier to exemplify things (love) than to define them.

He can never define _this._ )

 

Which is why when he said _I'm sorry_ , Steven asked _for what?_ (It isn't like when he says it to Xabi, just blurts it out and doesn't even know why; when, maybe, there's nothing else to say and he just, simply. Understands.)

 _For coming here._ And Steven doesn't look at him. _What makes you think you have to be sorry for that?_ He shrugs and looks worried (or lost), so unlike him and. _You would be happy. Everything would be the same, better. If I had never met you._

 _Do you honestly think that?_

A nod.

(Wants to tell him: _well, maybe, you don't know everything after all._ )

 _Admit it, Steven. You were happy._

( _I didn't know what happy was._ )

 _No... Fuck, Xabi. I'd be fucking miserable right now. I'd probably retire and with nothing to show for it._

 _I didn't mean football-wise, Steven._

( _Well, isn't it the same thing?_ )

 _If you had me and you didn't have Istanbul, would you be miserable?_

(Wants to say: _you_ are _Istanbul_ _._ )

Doesn't dare.

A smirk instead. _Well, the important thing is I have you both._ Kisses him, despite (not shown, not vocalized but yet—) obvious protest.

 

So, yes: Steven Gerrard doesn't define things, he only exemplifies them. (And in some cases, ignores them.)

 

(Xabi, Xabi wonders if that first _sorry_ was meant for himself. Thinks about home, and what it would have been like. Hates himself for leaving. Hates himself for regretting any of it.)

 

It wasn't always like that.

There was a time.

(Xabi sits, alone, in his apartment in Spain and—)

He remembers Steven's body pinning him against his kitchen counter, arms wrapped around his waist (and there'll surely be bruises on his forearms and elbows the next day from rough contact with the wood) and his spine being pressed firmly against the solid surface. He'd pulled away, said his name three times between gasps, the consonants alone audible in some kind of accented slur of syllables. Tasted the alcohol off Steven's breath now seeping through into his senses.

 _We shouldn't be doing this. At least, not now, not yet._

He looked at him deliriously.

Brought his mouth near Xabi's again. _I... just want to kiss you... Just want to kiss you..._ (drunken babble, words that were supposed to not mean anything suggesting that _this_ was nothing; but, of course, they had quite the opposite effect)

Smoothed out the edges of his t-shirt. Pouted a little. (Pleading. Seductive. What was the difference now?)

And Xabi let him.

 

(didn't let himself ask all the _why_ s until later, reminding himself inevitably of Steven and what he would do and say. and it's then that he thinks that he's lost himself, and his identity for good; that being here and with him changed him, as much as he tried to avoid it.)

 

-

 

The first time, he's happy, tries to forget, thinks _it's better this way_. (Xabi doesn't get any phone calls or letters that summer.) The second time, he's infuriated (and maybe unlike some men, when Steven Gerrard is mad, he thinks most clearly) and starts putting things together, wondering what it is, and why, and how, and when ( _when's he coming back and when can I kiss him again and— fuck_ ). The third time he's feeling sorry for himself and mopes and whines and calls him at two in the morning when he's drunk (reminding himself of a teenage girl).

 _I remember once I asked you why you were here and you asked if I meant why you were in Liverpool, or why you were in my house, in my bed (and you would have blushed then, I'm sure, if you did things like that) and I'd laughed and said: the former. You said you didn't know. And that it was a gut feeling, like the one you felt at half-time in Istanbul, that it was right and it was good and it was meant to be. (I know that feeling so well, too. I felt it then. I feel it now.)_

 _Maybe, I took that as some kind of reassurance. That I was right. About you. About this._

 _(I wonder sometimes, do you feel it too?)_

 

He had told him his 'theory', as he puts it, and he'd listened intently. Steven thinks how amazing it is that they can have these conversations (the ones that matter; the big things—and really, there are so few _little_ things), and be completely comfortable. The way he's so accepting and he thinks he doesn't deserve that but he's grateful for it, every single time.

 

"Well, I guess I can see it that way, but you still won't find me wearing articles of clothing with 'I belong to Jesus' on them."

He smirks. _Smart ass._

Steven can't help but grin too, and pictures it and can only see Italy and—

young hope being crushed.

(And it's unavoidable, really. The way he quantifies foreign things, sights and sounds. When he thinks of Italy, he thinks of God and hallowed ground and (defeated purposes, death even) only that. Spain is Xabi and the little Spanish he knows, learnt in school (he remembers the phrase _tu es bonito_ popping into his head when he first met him and almost escaping his lips). It's just the way his mind works. Everything, in some way, makes him think of home. And it isn't because of blinding pride or narrow-mindedness. It's just the only solid, fundamental thing to him. And sometimes he feels that more. Lately though, he's started to question where home was, exactly. Remembers Xabi saying the exact same thing to him.)

"It isn't religious, not really."

"Well, what is it then?"

"I dunno... It's just the thought that everything was planned, you know? That we aren't just stumbling through life on our own."

"And you say _I_ think too much."

"Xabi..."

"Okay. Okay. Sorry."

Looks thoughtful for a second. Continues.

"Do you?"

"Do I what?"

"Feel like you're stumbling through life... with no reason or purpose..."

"Not with you, I don't."

"Well... it _is_ religious then."

A sigh.

"And that can mean whatever you want it to."

(Steven thinks: _the only thing I believe in is you. What does that make it, then?_ )

Says, "I love you."

 

(doesn't let himself think of the _why_ s until later.)

 

It's like the way you know, just _know_ all the simple things, like 1+1=2 and that the earth is round or the sky is blue and the ocean reflects it, that same shade of blue. (You know when you love something and you know when you hate it.) Things you can't really argue with, things you can't (or don't really want to) prove or question. And Steven, Steven wonders what the point of trying to prove any of it is. Discovery? Revelation? Enlightenment?

(he starts thinking of Columbus—the one who set out to _prove_ that the earth was round—and maybe, maybe it would have better if he hadn't had a taste for wanting to know. maybe less people would have died and the world would be relatively harmonious.)

Prying into things you're not meant to know leads to destruction.

 

 _(because, because he does something to me and he probably doesn't even know it, or he does, he does, and. he's beautiful and perfect and indescribable, and you can't even dream of anyone - anyone like him._

 _i love him and maybe, i do know why._

 _what i don't this is this: how is such a thing possible; what made it, us like this.)_

 

(maybe he's simply never been able to fathom love. and now he wants to, because he's never quite felt it like this, this simple yet completely complex thing. a bond, an emotion, a different state of being, a parallel universe, a—)

 

(it's never been about why; it's about security, about being able to look into his eyes and not be afraid.)

 

"How do you love me?"

(and Steven knows that it isn't an incorrect use of interrogatives by a non-native speaker. he means it just as he says it, as always.)

What he says is this: _I love you like I love nothing else. And—_

isn't that how it always is? you can't love two things in the same way. because everything is different. and loving comes from understanding, or knowing something in a way no one else knows it. love is personal and unique, every time. (if he even has an inkling of what love is at all, that is)

Xabi says, _going by this logic, that means you love what you hate too._

 _But that doesn't make any sense._

 _It does, actually. You have to understand something in order to hate it._

Steven says, _well, maybe we don't know anything about it after all, and maybe we never will._

 

Xabi, Xabi thinks of it like this:

like being alone in Spain, for weeks at a time. On vacation, or vacation from vacation, the English kind. Like how sometimes he'd wake up one morning in July (with no plans of travel at all in his mind) and have the insatiable craving to feel warm sea breezes and sample that particular colouring of the sky, like brush strokes on canvas in the galleries he peruses in England during his free time. Sometimes he can ignore it, others he can't (exactly _once_ ). Takes the first flight out.

Doesn't do anything remarkable in Spain. Opens all the windows, lets lowly, slow Spanish music waft through the apartment. That feeling of containment without being completely enclosed, completely imprisoned. Drifts along downtown roads in the afternoon. Sits on the balcony and drinks wine, or goes out to one of those small, lively bars with men playing guitars and dancing couples and wonders how three years made him a tourist. Goes to bed late. Spends his days lying around, reading, experimenting at times in the kitchen (ends up talking to himself, saying things like _hmm... too spicy..._ ; throws it away and starts over again), rearranging his DVD collection (plans to force Steven into conceding to watching some of his favourite classics the next time he sees him) or bookshelf. The TV stays off (he does enough of that in Liverpool), and he listens to a single (almost identical each time) message on the answering machine ( _i miss you, i love you, i—_ ) and he is as happy as he ever can be.

Simple happiness.

This, this is Xabi. Steven tells him he lets logic and calculation preside over everything he does. He's wrong. He lets his heart do it. (And if you listen to your heart, you'll find that it is indeed, logical.)

 

-

 

This time, it's different.

This time, he sends him a postcard with the Kop on the front, and a crooked heart drawn in pencil on the back.

This time, he's at home when he calls, lying on his back on the couch, a book in one hand, the cream pages brushing against his nose every so often as the soft wind comes through the large, glass, sliding doors leading to the balcony. Picks up just as the machine gets it.

"Xabi, I—"

"Steven?"

"Xabi." Sounds surprised.

"Yes, I'm here."

"Oh, I—"

Xabi thinks about how curiously easy it is to transfer messages to synthetic plastic and tape or slightly-crinkled, lined paper torn out of notebooks, or to talk about the things that are bigger than both of them, the things that can engulf them (and what they _have_ ) into oblivion if they're not careful (they won't let this happen, though, _ever_ ), but this, this isn't.

Waits for a second. Hears a deep breath (can almost feel it on his ear, as if he were here).

"When are you coming back?"

"I'll be back... when I'm back."

"But—" A sigh. "Okay. Fine."

A pause.

"So have you figured it out, then?"

"Figured what out?" he asks, unconcerned. (Wants to say, _you think when you're alone; I don't. To me, being alone means not having to think._ )

"Where home is."

A pang.

"It's... it's where you are, Steven."

"So... you mean...?"

"No, you silly Scouser. I don't think I'll be getting my English citizenship any time soon." Knows he's smiling.

"But you said—"

"You're with me now, aren't you? You're always with me."

(realises now that home isn't a physical representation of comfort or a place of tangible significance but it's a state of being.)

"I love you."

"You sure about that? Sure we don't need to have another meeting or something to discuss that?" Smirks.

"Oh, shut up."

Xabi laughs.

"What can I say? I go a little bit more insane every time you leave me."

(knows he wants to say, _because i'm afraid that one of these days, you won't be coming back._ )

"I'll be back soon, Steven."

"You promise?"

"I do."

"Okay, then."

 

-

 

The fifth time, he doesn't go alone

(Steven sits on the beach and tells him about the first time. Asks him if he was lonely. Says, _I was a bloody idiot._ Xabi tells him he isn't in the Scouse-land anymore, but, _sí, era un idiota._ Says, _I thought you left me and I was relieved, so relieved but I knew you didn't, and I was trying to let you go. But I don't want to ever do that again._ Shuts him up with a kiss.)

and there are no _why_ s to be asked later.


End file.
